


a million rambles from a depressed teenager

by windychild



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi, dirkroxy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windychild/pseuds/windychild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have a million stray thoughts about Dirk, but the most prominent thing about them is that they always come with the dizzying rush of alcohol, and I always end up sobbing his goddamn name into my pillow.<br/>God knows when I’ll get over it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a million rambles from a depressed teenager

Sun’s out today. As usual.  
Most people would call up their friends and schedule some kind of event. Party by the pool or some shit. I like swimming pools. Shrivelled fingertips, the smell of chlorine, flinging cool water around. The thing is, swimming pools aren’t any fun on your own unless you actually enjoy swimming. I don’t enjoy swimming. I’m terrified of water, getting it in my eyes, getting in my hair, the threat of drowning -- I just, don’t.

Most people would call up their friends and schedule some kind of event. Party by the pool or some shit. I like swimming pools. Shrivelled fingertips, the smell of chlorine, flinging cool water around. The thing is, swimming pools aren’t any fun on your own unless you actually enjoy swimming. I don’t enjoy swimming. I’m terrified of water, getting it in my eyes, getting in my hair, the threat of drowning -- I just, don’t.  
Swimming is okay in groups. Groups of two or three or four, because then, you can watch out for each other. I used to swim around with three other people. One of them was Dirk, and the other two were Jane and Jake.

Jane was on the chubby side, mainly just from puberty, I think. She was in that awkward stage of getting taller but being a little big around the middle, but I liked her so much. She had red glasses, oval shaped, and you’d think it made her look like a nerd but she was just cute. You’d also think that her glasses were the things that made her cute, but it’s actually just that she was adorable on her own and the glasses intensified her cuteness. She was cute. She even had cute freckles on her cheeks. They weren’t perfect like Jade’s, but they were cute. Precious cinnamon roll. I loved her so much.  
And then there was Jake, who was probably about as thin as a stick, even thinner than me, and I was a hell of a stick when I was thirteen. He was so fucking guarded and childish, with his stupid grin. He had this nasally laugh, which was probably the most endearing thing you’d ever hear. He’d make dumb puns and we’d all laugh, because they were so fucking dumb, and his vocabulary and sentence structure was so dated. It might’ve been just because he grew up parentless, and had to be raised by old people. And to top it all off? He was ridiculously, ridiculously charismatic as hell.

Dirk was just Dirk, with his moonbeam hair and his ridiculously pale complexion. He looked like he’d never seen the light. He was just Dirk. There’s no other way to explain it.

I had this huge crush on Jake, with his dumb (but cute) tendencies to be a complete clueless bastard, but so did Jane. I never made a move on the guy, because as charming as he was, I wasn’t about to break Jane’s heart by putting a hand on his thigh and jumping for his dick as soon as I could. We were, like, thirteen, anyway. Me and Dirk went to Derse Middle and Jane and Jake went to Prospit Elementary, which is a kindergarten through eighth grade school, not like Derse, which was sixth through eighth grade exclusively. The four of us had one thing in common, though, and that was that we went to the same diner after school, at around 3:30 p.m.. It wasn’t even like it was planned; me and Dirk just always went there and they always showed up there, too. The four of us inherently fought over the booth at the corner of the diner, and it was always a game whoever got there first. Eventually we just ended up sitting together, because our constant rivalry just made it convenient to hang out with each other.

The four of us inherently fought over the booth at the corner of the diner, and it was always a game whoever got there first. Eventually we just ended up sitting together, because our constant rivalry just made it convenient to hang out with each other.

Now that I think of it, that booth was actually kind of inconvenient, because though it was at the corner and didn’t get any of the light streaming through the blinds (at 3:30 the sun was angled right towards the windows), it was ridiculously hard to get in and out. There was another booth perpendicular to it, so we were basically stuck in this one-person walkway before you sat down, and if you or someone else had to get out to go to the bathroom or some shit, the person on the outside had to get up, move all the way out of the walkway and then sidestep so you could pass, and then sit back down, but have to get up again to let you back in assuming you still wanted the seat on the outside. To make things worse, when the waitress came up to you, she had to squeeze the hell in and then she was standing so fucking close to the table that her thighs were touching it. There was this one troll waitress we had, Aradia, who had this huge ass boobs so that when you were looking up at her, you couldn’t help but notice that her boobs were practically falling out of her bra, almost like they would just spill onto the table. It didn’t help that she was so close that you had no choice but to look at her boobs when you talked to her, and she’d stand there with her notepad and ask you what you wanted, and you had to make sure that you didn’t fucking look at her boobs when you talked to her.

The thing about Aradia was that none of us really gave a shit that she was a troll, and she was pretty fucking clueless about everything. She was fucking stunning, even for a troll -- okay, don’t get me wrong, trolls are pretty, but most of them are scary -- she had big boobs, of course, a real nice ass, and the bitch didn’t even seem to notice how hot she was. And she had these luscious lips and these long eyelashes, and wore maroon mascara and lipstick. Her hair was basically at her fucking ass, and it was curly as hell. It almost looked fake, but you knew it was real just because it was one of those things that you just knew. I touched it once, on accident, when I was sitting on the end seat this one time and when she turned around to sidle out of that awkward ass one-person space, her hair swished and it brushed against my arm. It was really coarse, like a goat’s fur or something, if you’ve touched one at a petting zoo. But it was black and shiny and just absolutely stunning.

I think Jake always had a thing for her -- he really wasn’t her type, I don’t think, but he always made googly eyes at her. Not even at her boobs, but at her goddamn face, because he was that innocent about things. When you go to Prospit Elementary, you’re as sweet as a doll and as about as sheltered as a Chinese mom’s firstborn son.

We always got pretty much the same thing at the diner, though. Always four cheeseburger combos. The cheeseburgers stayed the same, but the milkshakes always changed from day to day. It’d be cookies and cream one day, and then double chocolate malt another day, and so on and so forth. And the fries changed too, sometimes they’d be chili cheese fries, or curly fries, or onion rings, whatever we were in the mood for that day. We never got tired of it. It was a pretty bad diet, going there every single day to put a bunch of empty calories in your body day after day, but who cared? We were eighth graders, we were graduating and going to high school, we were enjoying our fucking life. Before things got bad and we stopped hanging out.

Those were pretty good days. And that’s why sunny days like this one remind me of the way things could’ve been -- you know, chill and laidback. We could be hanging out by the pool, just the four of us, except we’d’ve been older.

When we hung out at the pool, back then, we were pretty much inseparable. It was the pool at my house. It was one of those pools that wasn’t too deep at the end, maybe 5 feet at most, so I never really worried about drowning or anything. I mean, I was thirteen and 5”1, so if I was actually flailing around or some shit I could just relax knowing that if I stopped moving for long enough, my feet would touch the bottom and I’d be able to surface and hopefully not be dead.

But we’d hang out there with a bunch of sugary drinks and potato chips, in flavors like barbecue and sour cream and shit like that. Sometimes we had bottles of Calpico, which are like these Japanese milk drinks, except they don’t taste like milk and are basically just pure sugar. They’re in the idealized Japanese flavors like lychee, mango, strawberry, and “original” which is basically just some citrus tangy blend. But we’d just blow through those empty calories whenever we felt like it, and keep ourselves cool in the pool. Jane and Jake ended up with bleached hair by the end of summer vacation.

On all the occasions I almost drowned, Dirk was always there to pull me out of the water and call me a dumb bitch for panicking instead of putting my feet down and remembering the pool was only five feet. He’d pull me to the edge of the pool and brush the water out of my eyes, and god, my eyes would sting so bad and my nose and my chest would hurt from swallowing/inhaling so much water, and I’d cough for awhile, maybe sit out with my legs calf-deep in the water before I was ready to go back in and risk drowning again. I think that was about the time I started falling in love with Dirk; when he’d rub the water out of my face with his stupid butterfly fingers. Jane and Jake never made fun of me for it, because they were the nice Prospit kids, but Dirk never stopped giving me shit about the water.

“You’d probably drown in the goddamn bathtub if I wasn’t there to pull you out,” he said once, after Jane and Jake had gone home for the day.

“You’d like that,” I boldly retorted.

“I’d like what? Pulling you out of the bathtub?”

“God, no, I mean like, being in the bathtub with-- oh my god, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Lalonde, you’re so fucking easy to bait.”

I guess I am pretty easy to bait. There’s actually a girl this year who baits me pretty much every single day -- when she’s actually at school instead of skipping. She’s some fuschia blood troll, Meenah.

She’s actually annoying as fuck. Instead of talking like a normal person, she litters the entire English language with fish puns. Just because she’s a seadweller. Just because she can. It drives me nuts. But on the days that she’s actually, actually at school, she spends her time making life hard for me, and since Dirk graduated last year he isn’t around to help me out. Neither is Rose, who starts freshman year, but she goes to another school because she’s so damn smart. So no one really helps me out. She corners me in the hall, as often as she can, usually when I’m trying to get fucking books out of my locker. She does that gross greaser thing where she leans up against the locker when it’s still open so she’s the first thing I see when I close it.

“Hey, Sweetfin,” she says. That’s what she calls me. Sweetfin. I always roll my eyes and try to walk off, but she ends up grabbing me or taking one of my books or just… delaying me in general. Tells me she wants to take me behind the vending machines after school to make out, and it takes me nearly ten minutes to get my book back or get myself out of her grip, and even then, we end up making out behind the vending machines after school anyway. Her hand never gets too far into her pants. My lipstick is all over her face and her neck by the time that happens, and she can stop me and delay me all she likes but my legs stay closed. I’m not fucking anyone behind a vending machine. There’s already a bunch of spiders back there, and it’s gross and unsanitary, but it’s fun as long as my pants stay on. I think she has fun too -- I mean, for her, it’s because she probably feels pretty good about herself when she’s got her hands around someone smaller and weaker than her. For me, it’s because I kind of like it when she feels me up.

_Guilty!_

 

I talk to Karkat some. And no, I don’t care that he’s a troll. Nobody should care that he’s a troll, because trolls are perfectly good friends too. But anyways, I talk to Karkat some. He’s this angry freshman troll who wears primarily sweaters and sweats, even though the sun’s always out.

“Don’t you get hot?” I ask him whenever I see him.“No.” He always replies angrily or wearily. Never in between. Usually it’s wearily, the way he says “no”, but sometimes it’s angry, like he’s so fucking tired of hearing me ask the same question over and over again. I would be tired of me, but for some reason I’m still asking him if he gets hot. He never sweats or smells, though.

“No.” He always replies angrily or wearily. Never in between. Usually it’s wearily, the way he says “no”, but sometimes it’s angry, like he’s so fucking tired of hearing me ask the same question over and over again. I would be tired of me, but for some reason I’m still asking him if he gets hot. He never sweats or smells, though.

Me and Karkat talk about shit that I can’t talk about with most of the kids at this school. I can ask him a perfectly valid question, something I’m honestly curious about and he’ll think about it and respond accordingly, even if it’s a rhetorical question. And that leads to a good conversation, which most kids don’t know how to execute. I ask anyone else the same kind of question and I get a scoff and an “I don’t fucking know”. That’s why Karkat is cool. He talks about valid stuff, sometimes listens to my problems, and he’s cute. He’s cute in the 5”6, scrawny, and deserves a big giant hug even though I know he won’t accept it.

Sometimes he tells me about the girl he’s been pining for. Her name’s Terezi, she’s a sophomore, incredibly invasive but also blind, so it’s not like you can blame her for feeling up your face. Except sometimes she tries to lick you. I met her once, and never really saw what he saw in her, but I know that they hang out after school sometimes and Terezi’s pretty into him too, but she holds him at arm’s length because she can, and she’s also seeing someone else at the same time. It disgusts me. She’s one of those girls who just knows if a guy is into her. She can just feel it. And god, when she knows, she holds it over that guy’s head and dangles it in front of his nose, and she knows he can’t do anything about it except stare at that little secret in front of him.

Me and Karkat kind of go back a little, actually. He and Rose used to hang out. He’s actually a Prospit kid, but I think he must’ve been raised in a fucked up environment because he talks like a fucking sewer for a Prospitan. He’s about as smart as one, though. You wouldn’t know by looking at him, but talking to him like I talk to him? He’s smart. A real smart one. He used to come over during the summers, when the squad and I hung out in the pool, so I didn’t see him a lot, but Rose and Karkat hung out inside instead. They didn’t like the sun as much as we did. Me and Dirk would mess around with Karkat whenever he was around though, because we could. He was an incredibly good sport for someone so angry, and even though he constantly stressed that he was done with our shit, he still made sure to say hi whenever we were around. That’s why Karkat is so easy to talk to now, I actually know him.

I wonder why he never ended up where Rose went. For the smart kids. Because he’s a hell of a smart kid.

“You any good at biology, Izzy?” He asked me today. That’s what he calls me, Izzy, because I’m Roxanne Isabella Lalonde the III (not actually the third, that’s just my mom’s idea of a joke) and he thinks Isabella is much prettier than Roxanne or Roxy, and wants to call me Isabella instead. Isabella’s way too extravagant for me, so I asked if he could call me Bella instead, because that’s shorter, but he was like, “No way, Jose, you’re Izzy.”

So I’m Izzy. But anyway!

“You any good at biology, Izzy?”

“It’s actually my best subject. Took Bio Honors, believe it or not.”

“Well, good, you can help me then.” He said it so matter-of-factly, like of course you’re going to help me! I never argue with him when he does that, because I know better. If you refuse, he throws a bit of a fit. It’s actually kind of funny, but mentally taxing. It wasn’t one of those “let’s mess with Karkat for a bit, all in good fun” kind of days.

“What do you need help on?”

“We’re doing a review for the final, and I completely bombed the fucking section on the circulatory system and the genetics section.”

“How did you bomb the genetics section?! That’s super fucking fun!”

“Shut up, Lalonde. Help me out.”

“Wanna come down to Le Chateau de Lalonde after school? Rose should be home by then.”

“Well, if Rose is going to be around, why the fuck not. If you end up sucking balls at teaching, maybe Rose can fill your revolting place.”

“Aww, love you too.”

“Wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know.”

Karkat’s one of those unnecessarily polite people when it comes to your house and your parents. He’s smart. Trolls aren’t too good at blending into human culture, not since they integrated, but he’s the perfect model kid. Even for a human. He asks if shoes come off when you come in, just to make sure. He still cusses around parents, because he can’t filter his filthy mouth for shit. My mouth is pretty bad, too, but I’m like a 2 and he’s probably an 11. Good thing my mom isn’t around. She’s always out or she’s wiped out on her bed. When she’s home, she’s either hungover or drunk. When she’s home, I’m not, either. I get Rose and we grab our shit and stay at the diner until midnight. We don’t need her toxic shit in our lives.

I don’t give a fuck about her, though.

“Rose?” I called out. She wasn’t home, not yet, so me and Karkat dumped our shit on the dining table. “You have your bio book?”

“Yeah.” He lugged it out of his bag and slammed it down on the table. It made the glass vase on the table shivered, and he caught it just before it fell.

“Shit, sorry,” he said exasperatedly. “I’m so fucking awkward.”

“Nah, if it had broken I wouldn’t even have given a shit.”

“The glass, though--”

“Shut up, Karkat. It’s okay, you caught it. It didn’t break.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, and he exhaled, the tension flowing out of him.

“It’s just that-- god, it’s not even this elegant and fancy and shit at home, and I always feel so fucking out of place here.” He tugged on his hair momentarily. “I don’t really feel like I fit in anywhere.”

“Why’re you telling me this?”

“You’re just… easy to talk to, Lalonde.”

“I thought Rose was the one people talked to.”

“No, Rose is alright, but in a strictly professional way -- holy shit, she always feels the need to respond to your problems and extend a helping hand, even if her helping hand is missing a couple of goddamn fingers or some shit, she still makes the dumb decision to extend it anyway.” He talks really fast when he gets worked up, he uses obscure metaphors all the time. It makes a pretty good point most of those times, too. You have to be pretty good at understanding people who talk fast as shit if you want to talk to Karkat, because he talks so fast that it’s pretty much like a really intense rap or some shit. And he never trips over his words either.

“She’s just trying to be helpful, you know,” I told him.

“Shame, because it always comes out condescending.” Karkat huffed and opened his book, flipping through the pages aimlessly. “See, you’re good because you actually listen to what I have to say. You actually understand it, too, not like Rose, who automatically assumes her feet are already in my shoes. For someone so goddamn good at psychoanalysis, she really only sees the surface of things. Especially me.”

“Is that why you don’t hang with her?”

“Partially. It’s mainly just because she goes to Palmside now. I haven’t seen or talked to her in forever, actually.”

“You miss her?”

“Not especially -- but your house always smells like lavender, and whenever I walk by a plant or some girl’s perfume or some shit, I think of you two.”

“You know,” I said to him, “You’re a pretty chill guy.”

“Wow, thanks.”

I poured some vodka into my orange juice. He didn’t seem to give a shit. We might’ve traded more banter, if Rose hadn’t walked in right then.

“Karkat’s here,” I said immediately.

Rose looked momentarily stunned. “Oh.” Her features softened some. “It’s been awhile.”

“I’m just here for some help with bio, don’t get your panties in a twist or anything.” He was unnecessarily harsh -- probably just an accident. He does that sometimes, sounding harsher than he should. It happens to the best of us. Happens the most to Karkat.

“I see. Did Roxy not offer you orange juice?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at the glass in my hand.

“I don’t think he likes citrus,” I said quickly, diving in to rescue him. Otherwise, he would’ve accepted and have had to drink an entire cup of acidic sugary fruit liquid.

“Thank you, though,” he added awkwardly to Rose. She shifted the bag on her shoulders and went straight upstairs, without another word.

We studied for about four hours more after that. Studying with Karkat is like repeating a phrase over and over again, because sometimes he can’t focus and neither can I. We both suffer from a little bit of ADD, and I don’t mean the _lawlz yeah sum dayz im ADD and sum dayz im not haha lol XD_ kind of fucked up ADD, I mean like, we really cannot focus on shit. During those moments we just start laughing at the words, and how they don’t even make a single molecule of sense and eventually we can narrow down what exactly that phrase means and keep moving on. It’s really not much of studying, but more of “oh god please help me comprehend this”. On the fourth hour, Karkat proclaimed that he couldn’t concentrate for shit anymore and we went upstairs to fuck around on my GameCube.

“I’m pretty sure Lucario in Brawl is just a Mewtwo clone,” he commented in the middle of a game of Melee. He was lying on his stomach on my bed, playing Mewtwo, and I was cross legged next to him, playing Jigglypuff, which was one of the hardest characters to utilize -- for me, anyway. Even though I was fucking bombing the controls, Karkat was absolute shit at Smash. He charged up an aura ball and I A-spammed him off the screen before he could let go of it.

 _Game_!

“Jesus, Lalonde, you’re good at every character!” He threw the controller down.

“Hey be careful with the controller.”

“Controllers don’t break. I’ve thrown them at the wall a million times and they don’t break.”

“Yeah?”

“Only time I’ve ever broken one was when I threw it out the window.”

I laughed. “Holy shit, what were you playing?”

“Metal Gear.”

I couldn’t help but keep laughing. Karkat didn’t seem to mind too much. Karkat always knows when you don’t have any malicious intent. He’s just one of those people, you know? We played a couple more games and I was way too concerned about the well-being of my controller after winning so many times, so we powered off the console.

“Are you about ready to go home?” I asked. Whenever you power off a console, you’re ready to go home. That was just how friends worked. That’s how Jane and Jake and Dirk worked. They powered off the console when they were ready to go home.

But I guess Karkat wasn’t.

“Not especially. I don’t actually wanna go back to that hellhole.”

“Okay, then what do you want to do?”

“I dunno. I just don’t want to go back.”

I knew the feeling. It’s the feeling when you’re having a good time, and it’s 8 pm already but you can’t be bothered to go home just yet, even if your parents were worried about you. I’m pretty sure Karkat had a weird animal thing for a mom/dad, or something like that. I never really asked him how it was like at home, because, well, it was just one of those things you knew not to ask from him. Karkat was one of those people who’d tell you whatever he wanted to tell you, and you could ask, and he’d tell you, but it would just feel… wrong. Maybe I’m crazy.

“We could go down to the park or some shit? I can go ask Rose if she wants to come--”

“Nah, don’t ask her.”

“Is everything okay between you two?” I asked warily.

“More or less.” He sighed.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not especially.” His voice was acidic. When I say Karkat ends up sounding too rude sometimes, I mean he sounds too rude pretty much 75% of the time. “But I mean, if you really want to know…”

He took a breath. He was always taking breaths, or sighing, as if he never had enough oxygen. “She kind of made things awkward last year. With, like. You know.”

“If you’re gonna be vague about it…”

“Sorry. God. She kissed me.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when she… yeah.”

“Was she any good?”

“God, Izzy, you’re shameless. But, I mean yeah, she was pretty fucking good, but I was really too stunned to remember? Does that make sense?”

“If you were really caught off guard, I mean. Yeah.” I shifted. “Um. What brought that on?”

“I dunno, I guess she has a crush on me or some shit. But I mean… I’m not really ready to be kissing anyone that isn’t her -- I mean Rezi -- and I don’t want a fucking relationship with anyone that isn’t her, you know? And fucking Terezi is still trying to throw herself at a guy who’s abusing her and oh, god, I can’t fucking stop her--” I put my hand on his shoulder. He jumped a little bit -- I don’t think he expected me to touch him. He never expects people to touch him. Everyone ends up touching him anyway.

“Karkat, you don’t have to keep talking, not if you don’t want--”

“You’re right, I don’t want to talk about it, but I have to, I’m about to fucking burst because of all of this shit….” His voice was cracking all over the place.

“Jesus shit.” I put my cup down and scooted my chair towards him. “You need a hug.”

“No no nonononono, I fucking hate hugs--”

“You don’t hate hugs, you’re just fucking terrified of ‘em, nerd. Come here.”

“Izzy--”

I wrapped my arms around him. He was.. shaking, and I could feel his fingertips on my back.

“You’re okay for a piece of crap Lalonde, you know?” he said. His face was pushed into my shoulder, and his voice was muffled.

“I love you too, asshole.”

We sat like that for awhile, with my arms around him and his face in my shoulder, and his dumb fingers on my back but not really hugging me back, you know? Eventually, he shifted, and I let go. When you’re dealing with Karkat, if he moves, there’s probably a good reason why he’s moving.

“Was that really so bad?” I grinned.

“Let’s not talk about that.” He drew his arms up to his center and flopped down, belly up, looking a little windswept.

“Why not?”

“Let’s just not.”

“I didn’t like, overstep myself or anything, right?”

“No, no, it was nice, it was-- I just said I didn’t want to talk about this.”

“Right, right, yeah, sorry.”

We sat around for awhile. You’d think it’d be awkward, with us just not saying shit or anything, but it really wasn’t that bad. You know how in like, Pulp Fiction, Mia says that when you can sit with someone in silence without it being awkward, then you really know you’ve met someone special? It was kind of like that.

I fucked around with Karkat’s hair for a bit, because his hair is always messed up one way or another, especially around his horns. That area’s always sticking up and shit. You can’t get it to lay flat, not like Aradia from the diner’s does.

“I don’t really want to go to the park,” he said after a bit.

“Nah, neither do I.”

“Well, think of someplace to go, Lalonde.”

We ended up at the diner. That place was open all the time, 24/7, but you could really only expect good service before 1 a.m. and after 7 a.m. Me and Dirk made a run down there at 4 a.m. during the summer, and the food came out looking like someone had just thrown the first shit they grabbed into the pan, and then sauteed it with their eyes closed. Basically you don’t go to the diner and expect prime shit during unreasonably hours. Luckily, it was only a quarter to nine for us.

I chose the Inconvenient Corner Table that I told you about earlier. Karkat started ranting about how inconvenient the Inconvenient Corner Table was, and I told him to shut up, that the Inconvenient Corner Table was a historical landmark and he looked baffled -- either baffled or he didn’t give enough of a shit to care -- and then sat down.

Aradia bounced to the table and squeezed into the awkward one-person aisle.

“Hi!” she said immediately. “Haven’t seen you down here in awhile.” The way she said it wasn’t accusatory or anything, the way it would have been if it was another waitress. If it was another waitress, it would have been kind of like an angry “You didn’t come back to give me more tips” kind of a response.

“Yeah, I know.” I said it kind of awkward, though, mainly because I just didn’t really know how to respond.

“Well, anyways! Do you want a menu, or do you already know what you want like when you came here with…?” She kind of stopped short. I think she was trying to say “your friends” but didn’t want to make any assumptions. I don’t know a lot about Aradia, but the times I was here with Dirk and Jake and Jane, she seemed like a genuinely nice person. Not like those waitresses who’re nice and pleasant to you because they have to be or they want tips. She was just nice.

“No-- I mean, yeah, thanks, could I get one? A menu? Karkat hasn’t been here before.”

“Oh, of course! No problem.” She set one down in front of him. He looked up, mumbled a quick thanks, and might have looked back down if he hadn’t done a double-take. “Jesus, Aradia?”

“I, um… Karkat?” Aradia seemed kind of baffled.

There was this weird moment of recognition between them. It was one of those moments when you’re, like, walking around at WalMart with your friend or something and your friend sees someone they haven’t seen in awhile, and they’re running towards each other with metaphorically open arms and metaphorically embracing each other in sheer metaphoric happiness at their reunion.

“I haven’t seen you in a hell of a long time,” he said. I looked at him. He seemed kind of stunned -- in a good way, the way you’re stunned when your mom gets you a new phone or some shit without telling you.

“No, I know what you mean -- wow.”

I groaned. “Okay, fill me in on this shit. What the fuck is happening here.”

Karkat leaned forward and cleared his throat, the way he does whenever he’s about to go into a rant.

“This is Aradia--”

“I know Aradia, I’ve been here a million times. She’s got a nametag.” I heard Aradia giggle next to me. God, she was gorgeous.

“Okay, you know Aradia. Well, before I moved here, when I was still in the segregated part of the neighborhood, she was my neighbor.”

“Oh. Damn.”

“But Aradia wasn’t any fucking neighbor, she was like, the neighbor of all neighbors you could possibly have. I mean, she’s changed a lot--” Karkat stopped, and looked up at her. “I don’t know if I should say…?”

“Oh, no, I have changed a lot. I used to be really depressing,” she explained to me. “By depressing, I mean--”

“She was really, really fucking depressing,” Karkat finished.

Aradia giggled again. She doesn’t laugh, she giggles, with the knuckles pressed to the back of her lips like a schoolgirl. “Yes, I was pretty depressing. It’s hard to explain.”

“But, what changed?” Karkat asked.

“I dunno, it was after I moved here -- the beginning of the movement, you know, and everyone was kind of scared of me because I was one of the first trolls the people around me had seen--”

“--and everyone’s pretty racist towards us and--”

“--everyone was scared of me because I was--”

“-- super fucking tall and scary-looking and--”

“--I was so overwhelmed--”

“--and--”

“Stop, oh my god.” I had to jump in to stop them from doing that shit. It’s like walking through the hallway with your friend and your friend sees their other friend that you don’t know and they’re all laughing and making jokes that you don’t get and shit.

Aradia giggled again. Her giggle is like Tinkerbell farting, it’s really a beautiful thing.

“Aradia was kind a dead-looking bitch,” Karkat explained. “She was really tall and--”

“Scary-looking, yes.”

“Yeah, scary-looking, and when she talked, it was really bone-chilling. Even some trolls in the area were scared of her.”

“When I moved here,” Aradia continued, “I had absolutely no friends, not really. I mean, some of the human kids talked to me because the teachers told them to, but I knew they hated me -- well, they didn’t hate me, but they were scared of me. That’s why they were so mean. But there was this one day, during a recess, that I was walking out on the field. It was very overcast, and the sun was blocked out by all the clouds. But then the clouds moved a little, and the sun was shining through and it lit up this one dandelion.”

“Oh boy, she discovered Jesus.” Karkat said under his breath.

“Be quiet, Karkat! Anyway, I saw this dandelion and it was like the light was only touching the dandelion, and I thought to myself, my god, that dandelion was so pretty. It wasn’t big and puffy and white like the other ones, there was only a few of those little fuzzy guys left on it, but it was so pretty and pure and lonely-looking. I knew that it was just holding onto life, maybe enjoying what was left of it, and I guess that’s what inspired me to enjoy what I have, too. I realized I identified a lot with that dandelion -- not the pretty and pure part, but the lonely-looking part.”

“Bull shit, Aradia, you’re fucking gorgeous!” I protested. That was, like, the first time I’d ever told Aradia how fucking pretty she was.

“Thank you very much, Roxy, but I’m nothing special.”

“Ohhh my god, Karkat, back me up here.”

“Yeah, you’re…” Karkat had a really weird expression on his face. “You’re really something.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you two to say,” she said, kind of bashful-like.

“Does no one tell you how pretty you are?” I asked her, kind of infuriated. Infuriated in a non-negative way. Infuriated has a negative connotation, but I wasn’t negatively infuriated -- god, I can’t explain.

“Well, there was that boy -- the one who used to hang out here with you, the smiley one, not the cool one--”

“Jake?”

“Yes, he stopped by a few months ago to ask me out to dinner. Said I was very pretty and all.”

“Jesus!”

“Yes, and I had to turn him down because, well, I’m a busy girl, with my job and all! What a shame. He was so nice, too!”

“Yeah, Jake is pretty nice… god, I can’t believe he did that.”

“But you’re really a pretty girl, Aradia,” Karkat butted in. He was leaning onto his right hand, and scratching at the wood on the table. “I hope you know that -- and I’m really glad you’re better. Mood-wise, I mean. God, I wish I could feel better mood-wise.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Karkat. I hope you feel better, too.” Goddamn, she was such a pretty girl. “But that’s enough talking. I’ll leave you two alone with the menu, and you guys can figure out what you want. I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”

“Gotcha.”

Karkat decided on a blueberry cheesecake milkshake (“You’re still into blueberries after all this time, huh?” remarked Aradia, jotting it down on her notepad). I stole a sip when she brought it back, and it’s actually pretty good, but it doesn’t compare to the chocolate malt milkshake, which is still heaven condensed into a tall cup. At the diner, milkshakes aren’t those shitty dump-it-into-a-cup kind of thing, but they come in a tall glass, all fancy shaped, and the glass is frosted cause the milkshake is so damn cold, and you can see the waitress’s fingertips where she grabbed it to set it down for you. And all that is pretty great, but it comes with a shitton of whipped cream on the top, which is really fucking great, and there’s none of that gross ass fake cherry that they put on the cream. And that’s really really fucking great and all but it’s got a refill cup to go with it, which is so good because it comes in a metal tin pitcher thing just full of the same milkshake you ordered, it’s not a different formula, there’s just no fancy whipped cream or anything. You just gotta pour that shit straight back into the cup and drink it all over. You pay seven bucks for a milkshake but you get two milkshakes, technically.  
“I fucking love the milkshakes here,” I told him, slamming the straw into the top of my milkshake. “I remember how me and Dirk always drank the milkshake first and then ate the whipped cream, but Jake and Jane always ate the whipped cream first.” Not that Karkat really knew who Jane and Jake and Dirk were, but I think he kind of picked up on it. “They pulled out the straw, and sucked on the end so that shit wouldn’t drip all over the place when you were trying to maneuver it, and then they’d use the straw as a mechanism to get the cream into their mouths. I always thought that way of drinking your milkshake was kind of shitty, because you got this perfectly good milkshake waiting for you to drink it, but instead of drinking it you go and start eating the 5 cent whipped cream at the fucking top of it, when that should be the last thing you eat. It also messes with the aesthetic, because instead of looking down at your whipped cream topped milkshake you’re looking at this gunk that you swirled all over the place because you were cheap enough to eat the 5 cent whipped cream at the top. I don’t think that’s how Jake and Jane saw it, but I always fucking protested at that shit, because it was so dumb.”

“I guess I’m kind of guilty, then,” he said. “Usually I eat the whipped cream first, too.”

“That’s fucking stupid!”

“Yeah, well, it’s how I eat it!”

“Yeah, but, goddamn, what’s the point?”

“The point is that the whipped cream tastes good.”

“But then you end up with this ugly ass milkshake that you have to stare at the rest of the time.”  
Karkat made a point of licking a huge globule of whipped cream off the top of his milkshake. I groaned and rolled my eyes, because, god, that is such a dumb way to eat a milkshake. I guess no one really thinks the way I do.

Karkat finally decided he wanted to go home. It was 2 a.m., both of us had finished the entirety of our milkshakes, Karkat had exchanged numbers with Aradia to catch up more later, and I was way too tired to form a coherent sentence so we just went home.

I gave Karkat another hug and he returned it for once. I guess we’re kind of… better friends now.

I showered, washed my makeup off and put on a fluffy robe before I decided that I really wasn’t all that tired anymore. I don’t know, but sometimes it just happens, you know? You’re all tired for a few seconds and you actually get up to go do something and you get all alert and shit. I was feeling pretty damn depressed, the way I do whenever I have fun for too long and ended up dragging a bottle of brandy up to my room.

The thing about being up at 3 a.m. is that everything outside is quiet, but not really quiet, because you can still hear the crickets singing their nightly song and the steady whoosh of the cars outside if you stay still long enough. It’s not like going to sleep at 10 p.m., because then you still sometimes hear your sister in the other room cough sometimes or a car door slam as someone gets home from work. At 3 a.m., everything’s dead silent but not really dead silent. Normal people like Rose just fall asleep immediately. People like me just lay there, face up in bed, listening to the cars whooshing by and wondering where the hell the people in those cars are going.

I like to make things up, sometimes. There’ll be a man named Milton. Old guy, maybe seventy-two or something. He’s in the car with his wife Myrtle or something. And since they’re dated as fuck, they named their kids all M names just to match. Their daughter’s name is Melissa and their son’s name is Matthew, and they’re all Catholic and conservative and white as fuck.

They’re a normal, old, married couple. They fight sometimes, but they love each other very much, enough to make two kids and still live with each other, even after all this time. They’re all very normal, everyone in my stories are, except I put a spin on things. Always.

Myrtle’s cheating on Milton with some younger dude. He’s the mailman. Myrtle doesn’t actually care much for the mailman, whose name is Tyrone or something, but Tyrone is in love with every single wrinkle on Myrtle’s neck. They’re making out in the living room when Milton comes home early from work, and Milton, in his anger, whacks Tyrone over the head with his walking stick. Tyrone’s out cold, and Milton, in his anger, pulls out the revolver from under the dining room table. The one that’s used to keep the family safe in case anything happens. He spins the revolver, points it at Myrtle, and says in his old man voice, “I can’t believe you did this to me. Me, a man who’s been good to you for all these years. I can’t believe it.”  
He shoots her in the stomach. Myrtle cries out, because as a Catholic conservative white woman, she has never experienced pain. Milton is horrified at what he’s done, and with a couple tears of resentment at his own finger that pulled the bullet, he grabs Myrtle, puts her in the passenger’s seat and he’s driving to the emergency room, all this while Myrtle is slowly bleeding out from the bullet that her own loving husband has put in her.  
By the time I’ve come up with the story, I know that maybe like six cars have whooshed by already and at that point I need to come up with six more stories to make up for those cars, and then there’s like sixty two stories I need to make and I end up just tired as all hell.

I wasn’t really in the mood for making up stories, today. That’s why I had the brandy, and I was feeling really fucking depressed, so I didn’t really even wait for very long before I poured myself my first cup and downed the shit. I go through alcohol like a monster, and it always burns going down, but god, it feels so good.

I looked out the window, you know, to see if Dirk was up or anything. His light was off, but the light on the balcony was on, and he was leaning out, looking down at the street from his apartment building. He looked so peaceful, then, watching the cars whoosh by, with half of his face illuminated by the orange-yellow light coming from the balcony light. He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and smoked for a bit. I wondered if he made up stories the way I did. Well, he probably didn’t make up stories or anything. He probably just watched them go by for the hell of watching ‘em go by. He wasn’t like me. Nobody’s like me, but then again, nobody’s like him, and nobody’s like anybody else.

I watched him for a little longer, pulling aside the curtain to look at him better. It felt kind of creepy, I guess, but I didn’t really care. You know, sometimes you’re doing something really wrong or really gross and you don’t really care whether or not anyone catches you. Not in the moment, no, but sometimes you regret it later. You always know that you’ll regret it later, but you don’t care.

He finally looked up, and I guess he saw me. He raised a hand, a quick salutation. I raised mine back and pulled the curtains back into place. It’s only cool to watch someone as long as they know you’re not watching them. If they see you, and they know you’re watching, it’s probably a good idea to stop. At least, in my book it is.  
I have a million stray thoughts about Dirk, but the most prominent thing about them is that they always come with the dizzying rush of alcohol, and I always end up sobbing his goddamn name into my pillow.  
God knows when I’ll get over it.


End file.
